Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will travel to Panama next week, the second senior U.S. official to visit the country in as many months, as President Donald Trump says America is “reclaiming” the country’s eponymous canal.
While there, Hegseth will meet with the country’s president, Jose Raul Mulino, and attend a meeting of regional chiefs of defense. He will also visit military sites and the Panama Canal itself.
In a statement Friday, Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell wrote the meetings “will drive ongoing efforts to strengthen our partnerships with Panama and other Central American nations toward our shared vision for a peaceful and secure Western Hemisphere.”
The U.S. has a small military presence in Panama, though the Pentagon has reportedly been planning options to increase that number, in line with the president’s goal to take control of the canal. America is currently participating in a military exercise inside the country.
“To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it,” Trump said in a March address to Congress.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the country in early February, where he also met with Mulino. In a post on the social app X after Trump’s speech, Mulino said ownership of the canal wasn’t being transferred and that he and Rubio didn’t discuss the topic.
“I reject, on behalf of Panama and all Panamanians, this new affront to the truth and to our dignity as a nation,” Mulino wrote.
Congress voted to transfer the canal to Panamanian ownership in 1978, deeming U.S. control unpopular and impractical. The process concluded more than two decades later.
Hegseth spoke with Panama’s president and minister of public security in early February. During the latter call, according to a Pentagon summary, Hegseth “emphasized that his top priority is to safeguard U.S. national security interests under President Trump’s leadership, to include ensuring unfettered access to the Panama Canal and keeping it free from foreign interference.”
The Trump administration has warned broadly that China is growing too involved in the Panama Canal through the country’s Belt and Road Initiative, a foreign aid scheme U.S. officials say is exploitative.
The last U.S. defense secretary to visit Panama was Donald Rumsfeld in 2004. More than a decade earlier, the U.S. led a short war in the country to remove then-President Manuel Noriega, later indicted for drug trafficking and racketeering.
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
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